HeidiSongs Teaching Resource

Well, spring is finally popping out all over in my classroom, even though it really doesn’t feel like it too much outside!  We spent the week learning about the life cycle of the frog, and then kicked off our unit on community helpers by learning about fire fighters and having a big school wide earthquake drill on Thursday.  Ah, Kindergartners just don’t understand very much about these things, do they?  Even after we went though the whole “duck and cover” routine and accompanying explanation, and then exited the building, there were still questions such as “When will the earthquake start?” floating around the grassy area where we were all assembled for the drill. LOL!   1.  A Frog and Tadpole Art Project  We started our unit on the life cycle of the frog with a tadpole project on Monday and a frog project on Tuesday.  I am sharing the patterns for these projects with you today, just for fun.    The frog in particular is one of t...

Spring is just around the corner, and my room is all decorated with flowers and leprechauns now! We are still in the midst of book making fever, and now they are writing “chapter books.”  This means that at random places in the middle of the book, they are inserting the words, “The end” and then continuing on the next page!  One of my little sweeties kept referring to his work as “Tractor One” and “Tractor Two” rather than “Chapter One” and “Chapter Two.”  I love it- too cute! Now for this week's post- Behavior problems are BUGGING me!! 1.  How I Solved the Most Difficult Behavior Problem I Have Ever Encountered! A couple of years ago, there was a mom that requested me to be her child’s teacher because she had heard that I was a very firm and no-nonsense kind of teacher.  And lucky me- I wound up with a child in my class with the most difficult behavior problems that I had ever encountered after about 23 years of teaching.  Even two months i...

It's MARCH!! It's spring!!! Here's what we did this week and some FREEBIES for you, perfect for this time of year! 1.  Bookmaking Fever! A couple of weeks ago in my own classroom, something I like to call “Bookmaking Fever” broke out, and has been spreading like a virus ever since!  I give all of the credit for this to one of my wonderful little students  who decided to make a book at home and then brought it in to show me.  He did a wonderful job of using inventive spelling to write his little story, and of course he illustrated the pictures as well.  He titled his book, “How the Bear Got Into the Balloon.”  (I believe he must have seen a teddy bear inside a balloon that someone gave as a gift for Valentine’s Day.)  I was so excited about it that I asked him to read it to the class.  It was such a cute story, and the kids loved it!  He told us that he wanted to be a “story writer” when he grows up.   Naturally, I saw ...

Well, it is not spring quite yet, but we certainly have spring fever in my classroom!  We have taken down the snowy white bulletin boards and replaced them with some flowery boards with insects on them.  It’s wonderful to have some color back in the room!  We are now beginning to study the life cycles of animals that hatch from eggs.  Thanks to a wonderful volunteer dad, we planted some carrots and sweet peas this week, too, and that was exciting for the children.  Since it takes less than a minute for each child to actually put the seeds in the ground and cover them up, I had him let the children ride the tricycles or draw outside with chalk on the pavement after they were finished planting.  Usually, we have good luck with these plants and they grow nicely in our classroom garden, giving us a nice little harvest in late May. I will, of course, be ordering insect larva from InsectLore.com soon, but I want the insects to be alive during our Open Ho...